Corporate restructuring is a fact of life in Hollywood. Entities absorb other entities, divisions get cut loose. It is what it is. For the purposes of fans of movies and TV, often it doesn’t mean much, unless the moves lead to your favorite shows or movie franchises going away. So the news from Variety that Paramount Global is shutting down Paramount Television Studios sounds huge. But in actuality, this was a separate division founded in 2013, rather than CBS Studios, which handles most of the company’s TV output.
The original concept for Paramount Television Studios was to produce television specifically based on Paramount Pictures-owned IP. They own the Jack Ryan movies, and thus made the Jack Ryan TV series. They own The Godfather and made the TV miniseries The Offer. But the tumultuous streaming landscape means that studios have more content to make than they generally receive revenue for. So in order to cut the $500 million per annual cost of PTS, Paramount Global is shutting it down. The continuing programming will fold into CBS Studios. CBS Studios produces all the Star Trek series, Evil, Ghosts, et al.
The report has no word on how many jobs this shuttering will lose, and that is, as always, the most important part of these corporate shufflings. Anyone whose job became redundant following a merger will tell you it’s no comfort to know the projects you worked on will go on without you. But, TV will still exist.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.